Transport/delivery trucks are often configured for security reasons with enclosed rear van areas, whereby access to the goods located therein is via one or more lockable doors. Similarly, recreational vehicles including mobile homes often contain hollow compartments that act as storage areas, where access to the inside of the compartment is via at least one door or hatch located on the outside of the vehicle's body.
A tradesperson's vehicle in the form of a motor vehicle utility often has one or more toolboxes or storage containers mounted on the utility's tray in which the tradesperson will store his/her tools. Sometimes, the open tray area of the utility can be covered with a solid hatch to protect and secure cargo thereunder. Furthermore, motorcyclists will often have saddlebags affixed to either side of the motorcycle frame for carrying items therein as they travel around.
As the cargo inside each of these storage areas is valuable to its owner, there is a need to prevent unauthorized access to such access points and as a result, the above doors, compartments, boxes, containers, covers and bags are usually lockable.
The invention will be more particularly described herein with respect to one or more door/s on an enclosed van of a truck. However, the invention has general applicability as detailed above.
The presence of such lockable doors brings with it a problem where each door requires its own key for moving its locking mechanism between its locked and unlocked conditions. When the vehicle has a number of lockable doors, the driver has to act on each of the locking mechanisms in order to open its relevant door. One example is where the transport/delivery truck may have as many as eight access doors into its rear enclosed van area, wherein behind each door is a bay holding different cargo relative to each other bay and the driver may need to unlock and open each of the eight doors in turn; until he finds the correct bay. For the driver to walk around the truck, unlocking and then relocking each door, comes at a time cost penalty, which is exacerbated when the doors do not have common locks and each requires a different key. If there are many keys, further time is spent by the driver trying multiple keys in a particular lock, until the correct one is found. In addition, before the driver either leaves his vehicle or drives away, he must ensure that each door is locked, thus wasting even more time.
Further, when returning cargo to a bay in the transport vehicle, the driver may have to put the cargo down on the ground by the side of the vehicle and then find the appropriate key to insert into its relevant lock and then open the door to the desired bay. With the door open, the driver then needs to pick up the returned cargo, put it back into its bay and then close the bay door and relock it. If the driver is returning several different pieces of cargo, which are required to be located in and behind several different doors, more time is lost. More particularly, if any of these events occurs at night, there is an even greater inconvenience to the driver who in addition may need to carry a flashlight to help him find the relevant key.
In many instances, the type of locking arrangement found in the prior art has been of a type that accommodates a low security locking means and thus a simple door lock and latch may suffice. However, as the value of the cargo held in the storage bays increases, so must the standard and security of the door and its locking mechanism. The T-handle has found wide-spread acceptance as a door handle of choice on transport vehicles and the like, since it is mounted in a dish and is therefore essentially flush-fitted to the relevant compartment on the vehicle.
The present invention therefore seeks to provide an improved locking arrangement. More particularly, the present invention provides a locking arrangement, which seeks to minimize or ameliorate the disadvantages of the prior art. For example, most modern vehicles, particularly trucks and motor cars and even motorcycles, have central locking facilities, wherein through activation of a suitable actuator via a remote control device or via the vehicle's own key, the vehicle's lockable doors can be individually in some cases or in most cases, all be locked and unlocked simultaneously. However, it would still be preferable to be able to lock or unlock each locking means either via a key or via the central locking system.